Purchase Your Tickets – The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later

The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later

All tickets are $12. Parental discretion is advised. This performance contains mature-themed subject matter and instances of strong language.

Moorestown Friends School proudly presents The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, a potent sequel to the landmark docudrama about community reactions to Matthew Shepard’s 1998 murder. This new play explores what progress, or lack thereof, has been made over the past decade.

This will be the farewell MFS production for Director and Drama Teacher Mark Gornto, who is moving with his family to Ohio at the conclusion of the school year. The original Laramie Project was performed by MFS students in 2005 and directed by Mark.

As an added bonus, Andy Paris, a member of the Tectonic Theater Project, will speak to the audience after the performance on Friday, March 6. Andy is an Emmy-nominated writer who worked on both the play and the screenplay for Laramie.

My friend Matthew created more change in his death than he may have ever achieved in his life. He was one man. One man that knew he could change the world. He serves as a reminder to all of us that as one person we too can create a change in our community and schools.

Romaine Patterson, Matthew Shepard’s best friend

In October 1998, on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming, a 21-year-old college student named Matthew Shepard was killed. Characterized as a hate crime, the murder became a watershed moment in American civil rights. In the aftermath of Shepard’s death, Moisés Kaufman, Andy Paris, and other members of the Tectonic Theater Project conducted more than 200 interviews with residents of the town. Using interview transcripts, court documents and media reportage as source material, they created The Laramie Project, a play that chronicles how the community grappled with the murder.

The original Laramie won numerous awards and is one of the most-performed pieces of theater in America today. It has been seen by more than 30 million people across the country and was adapted for the screen by HBO.

Ten years later, in the fall of 2008, company members Moisés Kaufman, Leigh Fondakowski, Greg Pierotti, Andy Paris, and Stephen Belber returned to Laramie to interview the same people. These interviews focus on how Laramie has changed: politically, socially, religiously, and educationally. Using “Moment Work,” Tectonic’s unique approach to developing plays, the new interviews have been crafted into an Epilogue: The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later.